But instead of a service member resting a finger on the trigger well in preparation for the next shot, in video footage of the Bullfrog weapons system, a hulking, metal machine tilts the weapon just slightly, refocusing itself.

As the U.S. contends with steep expenses to counter cheap drones, Allen Control Systems, or ACS, announced Monday that the Marine Corps has chosen the Bullfrog autonomous weapon system to integrate into its airborne defenses.

The futuristic apparatus is an AI-enabled weapon system that detects, tracks and then automatically aims firearms against aerial threats like drones. That Marine Corps selected the system under its Ground Based Air Defense, or GBAD, program, which develops and fields capabilities to protect forces from airborne attacks.

The service plans to incorporate the Bullfrog into its Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System (L-MADIS), a counter-unmanned aircraft system mounted on two vehicles that relies heavily on electronic warfare.

The system is already in use in the Army and Navy and has been approved by Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Pentagon’s unit established to streamline the acquisition of counter-drone technology.

The Defense Department’s focus on countering drones comes as conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have underscored the increasingly important role of cheap drones on the modern battlefield. The Pentagon has placed a growing emphasis on developing and fielding counter-drone technology that is more scalable and less pricey.

Their prevalence has exposed the economic imbalance of U.S. air defense, as small, relatively inexpensive drones have forced the country to expend expensive interceptor missiles that can cost millions of dollars to make.

The challenge has become especially pronounced during the U.S. war with Iran, where American forces have relied heavily on costly defenses to counter Iran’s Shahed drones, which can cost around $35,000 compared to around $4 million for some interceptors. Experts have warned that the cost of a prolonged war may drastically deplete U.S. interceptor stores.

An ACS press release on the Marine Corps deal linked to the Bullfrog M240, which is compatible with the U.S. military’s belt-fed, fully automatic M240 machine gun. According to the company, the M240 system has a maximum effective range of nearly half a mile and can attack medium and large drones weighing up to 1,320 pounds. Without ammunition, the system weighs 300 pounds.

According to the company, which also has variants that support the M2 machine gun and M320 chain gun, the M240 system has “a cost-per-kill as low as $10.”

Other defense firms are also working to procure more affordable counter-UAS defenses. This week, Lockheed Martin announced a cheaper Patriot interceptor missile that they say will have a price tag of less than half of what other multimillion-dollar interceptors cost.

The New Mexico-based firm this week pulled the curtain back on Buckler, an interceptor designed to kill Group 3 drones — UAS weighing up to 1,320 pounds and flying below 18,000 feet at under 250 knots — for a cost of under $100,000 per unit.

Buckler is designed to knock out UAS at supersonic speeds, according to a company release, and is assembled with an airframe and propulsion system manufactured entirely at X-Bow factories, thus eliminating a production bottleneck that has plagued myriad high-priced systems reliant on multi-company components. Axios first reported about the X-Bow Buckler.

The unveiling at London’s 2026 Farnborough Airshow this week is the latest push by U.S. industry to solve an interceptor enigma that has become increasingly glaring as the nation’s war with Iran drags on.

U.S. troops in the military’s Central Command area of operations have continued to face the onerous task of leaning on exorbitantly priced interceptors to contend with Iran’s vastly cheaper, mass-produced Shahed attack drones.

The use of a single PAC-3 interceptor to knock one Shahed-136 out of the sky comes with a $4 million to $35,000 tradeoff, or a 114-1 cost-per-kill ratio.

“You can’t win a war of attrition trading million-dollar interceptors against thousand-dollar threats,” X-Bow founder and chief executive officer Jason Hundley said in a release. “Buckler has flown, it comes in under $100,000, and we build its airframe and propulsion ourselves — the part of the industrial base that is so stressed by today’s munitions demands. This is our answer to the call from the U.S. and its allies: affordable capability, at scale.”

X-Bow’s announcement comes after the firm’s recent test of the Buckler munition — one that derives its name, as TWZ noted, from a Medieval era shield — that demonstrated its propulsion and flight performance, the company announced.

Following a similar theme at Farnborough, Lockheed Martin on Monday introduced what it hopes will be another low cost per kill solution to the ever-evolving unmanned threat.

The defense giant this week introduced the Morfius X-Rotor, a ground-launched “one-to-many” airborne high power microwave counter-UAS system the company says can “neutralize more than 50 enemy drones in a single flight.”

Morfius is built, most notably, to be recovered and reused.

Lockheed also introduced a cheaper Patriot interceptor.

The business, which operates a plant in Singapore, is discussing cooperation with local partners elsewhere to extend its production footprint in the coming two years, an executive said.

Ira Hughes, a senior director of sales at Doodle Labs, told Defense News the company specializes in long-range, wireless mesh networking solutions that power drones and robotics. In Ukraine, the business works with local suppliers of unmanned systems and the Ukrainian military to adapt its radio solutions to the evolving threats on the battlefield.

“One of our customers makes two different types of drones. They make an inexpensive drone … with a cheap radio and camera system in it, and then they make a drone with our radio in it, and they use that for higher-value targets,” Hughes said. “They’ll go back to us and say: For vehicles with jammers, tanks with jammers, we go with your radios first, and this lets us change channels very quickly if we come under a jam.”

“We also have a very wide range of frequencies we can upgrade to in a single radio,” Hughes added. “So if we can move from the channels that they’re trying to jam to an unjammed channel, we continue to operate, and we can continue to get to the target.”

Amid rising demand for its radio systems, Doodle Labs is holding talks with manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe to launch local production. In particular, the company keeps an eye on a specific stateside policy provision.

“We are working on the ability to do U.S. manufacturing when needed. We’ll manufacture with a third party … and as the NDAA requirements change in the United States and the Made in America incentives come, we’ll be prepared and able to manufacture in the United States,” Hughes said, referring to the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual legislative vehicle for enacting defense-acquisition policies.

As drone production continues to increase in Western countries, allied nations will also need to ramp up their radio production as the existing supply chains lag behind the demand for unmanned systems, according to Hughes.

“A lot of those systems need advanced radios to be able to operate at the ranges and in the difficult conditions that they operate in,” he said. “We can make tens of thousands of radios a month, millions of radios a year if we need to.”

Such has been the case at London’s 2026 Farnborough Airshow, where Lockheed Martin on Monday introduced what it hopes will be a low cost per kill solution to the ever-evolving unmanned threat.

The Morfius X-Rotor is a ground-launched “one-to-many” airborne high power microwave, or HPM, counter-UAS system the company says can “neutralize more than 50 enemy drones in a single flight.”

Built, notably, to be recovered and reused, the Morfius is capable of using any command and control system and does not rely on any unique sensor or fire control radars, the company announced.

Morfius “sets a new benchmark for counter-drone capability — delivering a high kill rate while keeping the cost per kill low,” Randy Crites, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Advanced Programs, said in a release. “By leveraging a lightweight, field reusable high-power microwave architecture, we provide the most effective, low-cost solution on the market today.”

The company announced it is accelerating prototype production of both the drone and its HPM payload in the interest of getting it into the hands of frontline troops.

The system was recently flight-tested in Arizona, California and Oklahoma, the company stated, where it also demonstrated interception and lethal capabilities. Additional tests are slated in the months ahead.

Monday’s announcement comes as the U.S. looks to reduce dependence on cost-prohibitive interceptors to defend against cheaper munitions, a juxtaposition that has come under increased scrutiny as U.S. forces have quickly expended interceptor stockpiles to combat Iranian missiles and Shahed drones.

Lockheed Martin on Monday also introduced a cheaper Patriot interceptor as a potential off ramp to the reliance on exorbitantly priced interceptors.

The system, called Hypnosis, consists of an array of mobile “stations” around a defended area, working in unison to disrupt the command-and-control signals of incoming threats, according to the manufacturer.

The company said the technology is the product of IAI’s experience in navigation warfare, of NAVWAR.

The soft-kill weapon is meant as a method for taking out large numbers of drones at once, in situations where hard-kill — or kinetic — intercepts would be tricky to execute because of the number of airborne objects.

The unveiling comes amid a resurgence of military confrontation between the United States and Iran and heightened tension across the Middle East as a result of it, as well as an intensifying exchange of missile and drone strikes between Russia and Ukraine.

Defense companies around the world have been working on technology enabling swarms of drones to attack targets with an inherent logic of their own.

Similarly, companies are also chasing defensive offerings for such scenarios.

Swarms are difficult to defend against because they can saturate and overwhelm traditional air defense networks, increasing the chances of at least one warhead making it through.

Each platform would carry between nine and 12 Hermes 650 Spark aircraft along with the deck infrastructure, control systems and mission support needed to operate them. Elbit described the approach as an alternative to acquiring a traditional aircraft carrier, aimed at giving naval forces extended maritime reach without the associated cost and complexity.

The Hermes 650 Spark is built around a front-mounted engine that provides a wider speed envelope and additional power margin, supporting short takeoff and landing (STOL) capability, heavier payloads and longer missions. The aircraft carries two payload bays, satellite communications and diagnostic systems, the Israeli company notes.

Elbit says the aircraft is built for compatibility with the ground control infrastructure of its larger Hermes 900 drone, meaning the smaller 650 Spark would be managed as part of a combined array with the Hermes 900 from a land-based control system. In such a setup, ships would serve as remote launch and recovery sites. According to the company, the arrangement is intended to reduce manpower requirements and the number of control stations needed, the company said.

The Israeli defense company cited Japan’s expansive maritime geography, Denmark’s responsibilities around Greenland, and Germany’s security environment in the Baltic Sea as examples of the kind of large, distant maritime areas the concept is meant to address. For Israel, a maritime UAS-carrier concept holds appeal given Israel’s encompassing offshore gas platforms that sit dozens of kilometers from shore and require monitoring against both conventional threats and drone and missile attacks from Iran and its proxies.

A converted vessel carrying multiple long-endurance UAS could extend early-warning coverage over these installations and fit Israel’s broader doctrinal preference for cost-effective, unmanned-heavy solutions over large manned platforms.

The company did not specify a timeline for when the system would become operational, nor did it name any customers or governments that have expressed interest in the idea.

Elbit’s announcement seeks to position the company as a player in this segment mainly against Turkey’s Baykar and South Korea’s Hanwha and can be interpreted as an attempt to export an existing system, the Hermes 650, in new operational packaging.

The sea service “is exploring the industrial base’s capacity to deliver highly capable, autonomous platforms optimized for operations from Ford-class and Nimitz-class Nuclear Aircraft Carriers,” according to the RFI. The response deadline has been set for Aug. 13.

The drones the service is targeting, part of the Air Wing of the Future Family of Systems, can be designed as “a single-role platform, a multi-role platform, or a modular FoS [family of systems],” according to the service.

But whatever the solution, the Navy wants the platforms to be capable of performing eight different missions: strikes against surface ships, strikes against land targets, anti-submarine warfare, air-to-air combat against enemy aircraft and missiles, electronic warfare, ISR, aerial refueling, and resupply flights for a naval task force.

The service is soliciting “industry expertise to identify a mix of platforms that can provide affordable mass, risk-tolerant platforms that can perform the above missions to counter current and emerging threats,” the request states.

The RFI lists a few specific requirements, including a minimum 1,000-nautical mile range for strike missions.

Drones must also possess “flight autonomy (e.g., carrier pattern, taxiing) and mission autonomy (e.g., dynamic tasking/retasking, threat evasion, automated aerial refueling) maturity.”

Additionally, they must be compatible with existing Unmanned Carrier Aircraft control systems, according to the RFI.

Significantly, while the RFI mostly focuses on carrier-based drones, the Navy also wants vertical-takeoff UAVs that can operate from other types of vessels, such as destroyers and mobile sea bases.

“The Navy is interested in novel concepts that can operate from any air capable platform in addition to the CVN (e.g., DDG, ESB) using Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL),” the RFI said.

The RFI is indicative of the Navy’s desire to eventually move on from fourth-generation carrier air wings to an air wing composed of fifth- and sixth-generation manned and unmanned aircraft.

The new drones “must demonstrate increased combat effectiveness over current fourth generation platforms at a given spot factor.”

The Air Wing of the Future, as designed, appears to be modeled for an old-fashioned battle of attrition, in which combat is waged by affordable — and expendable — drones rather than a handful of expensive platforms.

Contractors responding to the RFI are asked to “detail how your production approach supports rapid scaling and elasticity in a surge scenario,” and what techniques they will use to “keep unit recurring flyaway (URF) and sustainment costs within sustainable limits.”

Companies should also explain how their proposed designs will minimize maintenance requirements and fit into existing naval supply chains, according to the RFI. Potential manufacturers should also submit “planned capital investments (CAPX) or Internal Research and Development (IRAD) commitments to mature the solution.”

The Air Wing of the Future Family of Systems is part of the Trump administration’s Golden Fleet expansion plan for the Navy.

Existing family-of-system drone projects include the MQ-25A Stingray tanker and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA.

The company is in talks with a French producer to launch manufacturing of its solutions abroad and is also looking for partners in other European countries, according to a senior company representative.

Oleksii Konik, the co-founder of Trinity Robotics, told Defense News that the company initially planned to make around 1,100 UGVs this year, but, with the Ukrainian military increasing its orders, the business is ramping up throughput at its facilities in Ukraine.

“We work with the [Ukrainian] military procurement agency and more than 20 military units directly,” Konik said. “The most important mission that we have now is the robotization of the battlefield, because only this will allow our country to win the war.”

The company’s flagship UGV, Konyk One, is suitable for performing logistics and medical evacuation tasks. At the same time, Trinity Robotics is working on a new variant that will be fitted with a turret. This will enable users to deploy the UGV for combat operations, according to the co-founder.

While some Ukrainian officials expect the country’s ban on exporting weapons could be lifted this year, local defense companies are currently prohibited from exporting their wares. Meanwhile, Trinity Robotics is discussing cooperation with partners from allied countries to produce its unmanned vehicles abroad.

“We are looking for partners, manufacturers from Europe that manufacture trucks, vehicles, military parts,” Konik said. “We have an opportunity to create a joint enterprise in Europe … to produce our UGVs.”

“This will allow us to give additional volumes of our UGVs to our end users who are interested in that,” he said.

Under Kyiv’s Build with Ukraine program, joint manufacturing isprimarily intended to cover the needs of the country’s armed forces, but surplus output can be exported to other countries.

The company’s co-founder said that Trinity Robotics is currently negotiating with an unnamed French producer to launch a joint venture and produce its UGVs abroad. The Ukrainian manufacturer is also working to secure funds for its expansion, with recent investors including Sweden’s Front Ventures and Hede Capital Partners.

In its standard version, Konyk One weighs 460 kg (1,014 lb) and has a load capacity of up to 300 kg, according to data from the producer.

The search comes after dozens of MQ-9s were swatted out of the sky during the Iran war, according to a May 13 Congressional Research Service report.

With the Air Force currently possessing about 135 Reapers — which cost approximately $30 million apiece — such a loss rate is not sustainable, especially against a force like Iran, whose air defenses are less sophisticated than those of China or Russia.

“The Joint Force’s reliance on low-density, high-value ‘exquisite’ (>$30 million) manned and unmanned aircraft is unsustainable against adversaries utilizing layered defenses enabled by increasingly low-cost antiaircraft capabilities,” warned the Defense Innovation Unit solicitation for a new drone, which the Pentagon wants to “execute missions that the MQ-9A performs today.”

Rather than build a better Reaper, DIU is opting for an expendable replacement. The Massed Modular Aircraft, or MMA, project aims to develop a UAV designed to operate in such large numbers that it can absorb heavy losses and still overwhelm enemy defenses.

Particularly of interest is the size of the MMA. Drone swarms may be the next big thing in unmanned warfare, but generally those hordes are made up of small, inexpensive UAVs with limited range and payload.

But the DIU solicitation envisions a drone that has long range and a heavy payload — and is still inexpensive enough for mass production. The solicitation calls for a payload of at least 2,800 pounds, a bit less than the MQ-9’s 3,800-pound capacity.

The MMA should also have an unrefueled combat range of at least 2,300 nautical miles, according to the solicitation, and a one-way transfer range of at least 8,000 nautical miles. Additionally, the drone should reach speeds of at least 200 miles per hour and have the ability to operate from a 6,000-foot runway or improvised airstrips.

The DIU solicitation states that the drone should have “sufficient available size, weight, power (25kW), and cooling (5kW) to host a variety of internal and/or external payloads,” with a level of autonomous operations that would allow one operator to control several drones.

The solicitation does not specify the MMA’s dimensions, though the specifications suggest a drone comparable in size to the MQ-9. It also did not list a desired price point, though presumably it would be less than the $30 million price tag of an MQ-9.

The timeline for the MMA project, meanwhile, is ambitious. DIU is calling for “full-scale prototype flight testing within 21 months of award, with a targeted Initial Operating Capability (IOC) in FY2031. IOC for MMA is envisioned as 20 mission-ready aircraft delivered to an operational unit, able to be deployed.”

Pentagon solicitations continue to reflect a mindfulness of lessons from the Ukraine War, as well as the experiences during the Iran War. In both conflicts, the defender exhausted interceptors before the attacker ran out of drones.

“Keeping a constant airborne MMA presence to launch weapons, gather intelligence, perform electronic warfare missions, or relay communications will force an adversary to stay on the defensive,” DIU said. “This relentless pressure will exhaust the adversary, forcing them to burn through expensive anti-aircraft missiles and resources faster than they can be replaced.”

Built by Northrop Grumman, the MQ-4C Triton is a high-altitude, long-endurance UAV specifically designed for maritime surveillance over vast stretches of sea.

According to Rutte, the aircraft will help NATO detect threats early, protect sea lines of communication, and support operations in demanding regions, such as the High North. “These aircraft can fly for long periods at high altitude and cover large areas, including over open water, more efficiently than most other aircraft can,” he said at the event, organized to coincide with the NATO summit this week.

Rutte stressed that intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) is a vital capability for the alliance, as it provides the situational awareness needed to make the right decisions and stay ahead of threats. “Today, allies are taking a concrete step to strengthen this capability,” he added.

Rutte said Northrop Grumman will build the Triton aircraft, while European industry will be work on mission support, data systems and infrastructure. “It is genuinely made in NATO and is creating jobs on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said.

The MQ-4C Triton is capable of operating at altitudes above 50,000 feet for 24-plus hours, with a range of 7,400 nautical miles, according to the manufacturer. Current users of the Triton are the U.S. Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force.